Crimson’s Creative Challenge #48
No longer does it carry a thoroughfare
No more do the horses draw clattering carts here
Alas, the ancient bricks now in slow decay
The Old Red Bridge has had its day
Now tiddlers paddle with their jars
Arriving here in comfy cars
Where once with a flourish we snatched up the crayfish
Now even they are much diminished
A dirge, I lament, a eulogy, for gravel’s all that’s now found here.
crispina kemp 
A relic of the past!
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It is indeed. I don’t know how old it is, but probably 150 years, at least
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No wonder it is crumbling.
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I haven’t researched, but I do know the land to north of here was used as a sand and gravel quary, and since north of here is the confluence with another, bigger river, it would make sense that the aggregates were carted over this stream, hence the bridge (probably made with aggregates taken from the quary)
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Interesting history of the place.
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It was once part of the parish common. When the Parliamentary Enclosures divided and reallotted the land, this wasn’t fit for tillage nor grazing and so the parish kept it. Around the same time the Poor Law was enacted, and the parish was told to look after its unemployed, sick and disabled. So the parish put the poor to earn their crust in this quary.
The old pits have since flooded, vegetation taken over, and it’s now a peaceful riverside stroll.
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This is very interesting!
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It was great to bring the bridge into life with your beautiful words.
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I thank you. Scene of my childhood paddles.
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Amazing.
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🙂
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Oh that’s such a wonderful sad lament. So many beautiful places lost to all but memory.
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Thanks for the bit of history. A beautiful spot deserves a wonderful poem. Nicely done Crispina 🙂
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Thanks, Jen. Scene of my childhood paddles.
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Awe cute! 😊
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Jam jars on strings. And crayfish. We knew where the hid in the banks. So we’d get in the water, and position ourselves with a hand hovering just over the wayer, and keep perfectly still. And the crayfish come out. And we’d jab our hands in and snatch them out. Poor little things, we’ve must have given them a total fright. But we always put them straight back.
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Poor crayfish! 😏 Ah! Well it was all in good fun. Kids just don’t have that kind of fun anymore. Sad.
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We were never home, unless it was a very wet day. But that was before I acquired a second home at my grandmas. Ho-hum.
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I was also always outside somewhere. If not in the park across the street it was in the backyard.
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Kids don’t do that anymore. Is it because of the media hype on pedophiles? Are parents scared to let the kids out? Or is it cos they’re all glued to their computer games, too busy texting each other? Or hanging out at the Mall?
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It’s sad, but true I guess. A kid got shot and killed here recently but some other kids outside his school. His mother saw it. She’d come to pick him up because he called and told her he was afraid.
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That’s terrible. I don’t know how things are in London, but things aren’t like that here. Small town, quiet-ish. We’ve had murders, three I’ve known about since I moved here in 1983. One, both the victim and the killer I knew. All three drug related. Yet it’s not a town phenomenon. Before I moved here we had a shoot out and seige in the village, which involved a couple I knew and her children, friends of my oldest. It can happen anywhere. But I tend to think of it in areas of high population. The stresses of being all squeezed together.
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I dunno much. My friend Kristin is beside herself. She has a teen and a preteen. I know it would kill her if anything happened. Her oldest (Boy) is now in First year highschool and an athlete.I just shake my head. We’re not THAT squeezed
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And here’s me not wanting to go south of London for a holiday, cos I dread passing through that place. But that’s cos of the terrorism. I got caught up in the IRA bombings in the 80s. Now we have who knows who and what.
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Luckily I live in a pretty safe area near the rich folks LOL BUT who knows. Wow I’ve never been through that kind of horror.
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I don’t want to go through it again, that’s for certain. So I love my quiet out of the way place. 🙂
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Yup! Stay put! I would.
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Intend to. So no holidays south, Just as well, I can’t afford one anyway
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Good! 🙂
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Love the poem!
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Thank you, Susan.
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Really nice eloquence in the way you included the history in your poem! 😀 ❤
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Crikey! I just realised I had not left my comment on this wonderful poem!
‘Tis the way of things, isn’t it? Once a busy stretch, now abandoned but for those seeking to get away…
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Thank you. Dale. But this never was a busy stretch. Unless it was in Neolithic times. Don’t let on to everyone, but beyond this bridge a way there is a henge. It’s not been excavated; it was identified by aerial photography. Yet once you know where it is, it’s easy to see.
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How about busy “so to speak”…
Oooh…how cool is that?
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Good in’t it. And as with most henges (Stonehenge excluded cos that’s not really a henge) it sits in the confluence of two rivers.
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Very much so
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It’s a quite well kept secret. Except here I’m splashing it across the cyber-waves
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Yes, but we don’t know exactly where it is and you haven’t said, so…
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No, I haven’t. And it does take a trained eye to see it. But having visited other similar sites… even the colossal Durrington Walls before Mike Parker Pearce set his team to it… to me, it’s a declarative sight.
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I enjoyed your sharing, in photo and poem, of this special place. Who can ever forget their crawdad spots and paddle places?
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Indeed. And this place… it sometimes feels like I haven’t left that village, despite it’s 30+ years ago. My returns, though only two or three times a year and those only day trips, feel like the reality, and my present life in town, an interlude, nothing more.
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A beautifully written lament though I think I’d probably like it more now that it’s neglected!
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Indeed. It has an appeal now, inviting. 🙂
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Crispina–I responded to your prompt. Is our work supposed to be linked?
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Hi, yea, supply a link either your post in my comments, or my post on yours, helps me find it, alerts me that it’s there.
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Beautifully written…a reminder that things are forever changing 🙂
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But I wouldn’t have know that if this wasn’t a place from my childhood, replete with memories
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